Trump’s 40 Wall Street is full of “frauds, thieves and … schemers”: report

At a presidential primary rally in Maine earlier this year, Donald Trump said that those who have mocked his failed businesses “don’t want to talk about 40 Wall Street.” The 72-story Financial District office tower is home to “many of the top-notch businesses in the world,” the presumptive Republican nominee has said.

A Bloomberg report Wednesday told a different story. The news outlet reported that ever since Trump took control of the building in 1995, it has housed “frauds, thieves, boiler rooms and penny-stock schemers.”

“[N]o U.S. address has been home to more of the unregistered brokerages that investors complain about, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current public alert list,” said the Bloomberg article. The building is said to be the most valuable in Trump’s real estate portfolio.

According to Bloomberg, there are more than two dozen alleged and confirmed schemes, scams and examples of regulatory malfeasance tied to the building. Among them is New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s case against Trump University, which was headquartered on the building’s 32nd floor before it shuttered.

The building also housed the offices of real estate lawyer Luigi Rosabianca, who is facing up to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to grand larceny.

The average rent at the building is $36 per square foot, roughly $20 less than the average asking price in the area, the news outlet said.

In response, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said asking prices at 40 Wall Street exceeded that of comparable Downtown buildings, but he did not specify what the comps were.

“40 Wall’s average annual rent continues to achieve a record of immense success with 97 percent occupancy, a vacancy rate virtually unheard of in Downtown Manhattan,” he wrote. [Bloomberg] – Rich Bockmann